Chris Christie’s audition for one of the prime spots — if not the prime spot — in sports-talk radio lasted less than two hours Monday afternoon before it went off the rails. Alongside co-host Even Roberts, Christie was trying to show he might be able to fill the drive-time void set to be left by Mike Francesa. What he got was attacks from WFAN callers, his constituents as the sitting governor of New Jersey. And he was responding with the type of maturity that belies the ruler of the 11th-largest state in the union, but falls perfectly in line with the description of a good-guy-turned-heel, just the type of Skip Bayless-like schlock that draws ratings.

“Hey Governor, the next time you want to sit on a beach that is closed to the entire world except you, you put your fat ass in a car and go to one that’s open to all your constituents, not just you and yours,” said Mike from Montclair, a Jersey suburb that Christie said “leans left.” Of course, Mike was referring to Christie’s disgraceful showing at the beach over the July 4th weekend, when the rest of his state could not use any public parks because he shut them down in order to get his state budget passed.

Makes you think Christie was the kind of kid who took his ball and went home when he was told he couldn’t play quarterback.

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“I love getting calls from communists in Montclair,” he said, before adding that Mike was “a bum.”

This was pure shtick from Christie, who floundered as a Republican Presidential candidate after spending all or part of 261 days of 2015 outside of New Jersey. His aides took the fall for “Bridgegate,” and he blames his current record-low 15-percent approval rating on the fact that he’s not running for office. As he decided this was a perfect time to ostensibly take a week off from his governorship to audition for such a public job, it remains everyone’s fault but his own.

Yet hate is an emotion that inspires people into action, and draws far more feedback than agreement. Christie showed a natural talent for being a great villain, as an earlier caller from that same Marxian stronghold of Montclair had brought up Hillary Clinton, and Christie answered by saying, “I’m enormously relieved we don’t have a criminal in the White House.”

If Christie could be detached from any sense of political resurrection — which, at this point, seems beyond the pale — he would draw great ratings, like he surely did Monday.

But there is something fundamentally wrong with this type of nonsense being thought of as worthwhile. The talk about sports from Christie was fluent and able enough, but who cares what he thinks about the Mets? Roberts has matured and grown better in his time at WFAN, but he remains an unabashed fan of certain teams, and that bias makes it often sound like every other barroom conversation.

What made Francesa’s show so attractive to the listener (before he became a caricature of himself in recent years) was that he had spent time as a reporter. He either personally knew the people he was talking about, or knew of them from people who did. If Francesa was giving an opinion, no matter how often he was wrong in his later years, it was at least a somewhat informed opinion.

And you know the thing about opinions — just like a certain part of the anatomy, everyone’s got ’em. Chris Christie is just the next example of both.